An online merchant may provide a large number of items for sale to customers over the Internet. In order to provide this functionality, an online merchant typically operates a merchant system that provides a World Wide Web (“Web”) site or other type of user interface to customers. Customers may access information regarding available products and order products through the Web site or other type of user interface provided by the merchant system.
Once a customer has ordered one or more items from an online merchant, a significant amount of processing must typically occur in order to charge the customer for the purchase and to cause the ordered items to be delivered to the customer. For instance, various systems operating within or in conjunction with a merchant system might perform processing following the receipt of a customer order for detecting fraud, computing sales tax and shipping charges, performing accounting functions, processing a credit card or another type of payment instrument, initiating packing and shipment of the ordered items, tracking the shipment of the ordered items, communicating with the customer regarding the status of their order, and other functions. A mechanism must also be utilized to coordinate the performance of these functions by the participating systems.
Coordinating the operation of the systems responsible for performing the order processing, payment, and fulfillment functions described above typically requires storing information specific to the actions of each system involved in processing an order. Storing this information often involves the use of a distributed system of multiple databases. A transaction manager system and/or a two-phase database commit protocol are also typically utilized to keep the distributed databases and systems consistent and synchronized. Transaction manager systems and other systems utilizing a two-phase database commit protocol can, however, be difficult to scale and maintain.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.